


Dreams and Memories

by writer_bird



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Calla is very cool, Everyone Is Gay, I don't ship this, Joseph Kavinsky's Death, Requested by a friend, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, i ship pynch, just because kavinsky has a troubled backstory in this doesn't mean being abusive is ok, this was fun to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26233819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_bird/pseuds/writer_bird
Summary: SPOILERS FOR THE DREAM THIEVES!!ok if you're still you can have the summary:After Kavinsky dies in the events of The Dream Thieves, Ronan realizes through a series of dream-like visions that he is witnessing fragments of Kavinsky's memories. Through these visions, Ronan realizes things he never knew about the other dreamer, and is forced to view things he knew about himself in a different light.
Kudos: 7





	Dreams and Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JayBird_13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBird_13/gifts).



_"Get down!" Ronan, his arms around Matthew, glared up at Kavinsky._

_There was fire in Kavinsky's eyes, not just reflected from the fire demon writhing in the sky. The fire burned in Kavinsky._

_Without taking his eyes from the fire demon and the night horror, he said, "The world's a nightmare."_

_In that moment, Ronan knew what the other dreamer was going to do. He knew it like he knew the sounds of the night horrors when they come for him, and like he'd known every time that they were going to rip him to shreds. That is, before he'd conquered the night horrors and embraced them. It seemed Kavinsky had never confronted his horrors._

_Kavinsky couldn't do this. He couldn't end it like this. It wasn't right. "Come down, you bastard," Ronan shouted. Kavinsky didn't even spare him a look._

_A terrible sound tore through the air, accompanied by the smell of sulphur. Ronan ducked his head, his arms around Matthew, and waited for it to end. When it did, Kavinsky was slumped on the roof of the car, his gaunt eyes empty. Cars crashed around them and people screamed._

_The world's a nightmare._

Ronan Lynch dragged awake slowly, swimming through the sludge of dreams. It had been three weeks since the events of the Fourth of July, and the third time he'd had that same dream.

Repeating dreams would mean something to anyone. For Ronan, having a dream simply once meant that it had significance, so three times meant it was triply important than usual. Now all he had to do was to figure out the significance of this one.

Moving almost automatically, Ronan crossed the room and slowly poked a cracker through the bars of Chainsaw's cage.

What did the dream mean?

The sky was dark outside Ronan's window - it had to be one in the morning at least - but for once Ronan didn't feel like leaving his room to see if Gansey was awake, or if Noah was around to pester. He didn't even feel like drinking.

Why did he keep seeing Kavinsky's face when he closed his eyes? He hadn't meant that much to Ronan. He had been a part of his life, the dirty, real, alive, part of his life, yes, but Ronan was past that. He didn't need to be a dream thief or taught by a thief anymore. He knew, now, how to take without stealing, from life and Cabeswater. Kavinsky was past him.

Then why?

They went to Nino's that morning, less for the food there and more for the comfort of the routine of it all. Ronan, Adam, Gansey, Noah, and Blue. Ronan watched the others chattering and talking about whatever came up, feeling slightly distant, even more distant than Noah, who was actually present in the conversation; he'd been more corporeal than ever since Kavinsky had stopped dreaming.

And just like that, with the thought of Kavinsky flickering across his consciousness, Ronan's vision flickered with spots of black and white.

_He was hunched over the steering wheel of a car, his left hand gripping the wheel like a lifeline. His right hand was balled in a fist. His breath burst out of him in ragged gasps, and something was gripped in one hand. Slowly, he unfurled his right hand to see what was gripped there, mingling with the sweat. In his hand was a pair of sunglasses: white frames, dark tint. They hadn't been there a moment before. He felt euphoria filling him, euphoria at the success of it all, and the exhilaration. The kind of euphoria drugs could never conjure._

"Ronan!"

Ronan's eyes flew open with a violence. He realized that his hands were gripped around the table, knuckles white. He allowed himself a brief moment to close his eyes and sink in the darkness behind his eyelids before he jerked them open to the flooding glare of Nino's.

"What?"

"Are you okay?" Adam asked, his eyebrows slightly scrunched. Gansey, too looked concerned, although it was clear he was trying to hide it behind an air. He was wearing his businessman face and before Ronan could answer, Gansey took charge of the situation.

"You blacked out. Did you hit your head recently? When's the last time you ate?"

"Also have you been drinking like a moron again?" Blue offered helpfully.

"Jane," said Ganesy, but Ronan could appreciate the slight barb in Blue's voice. She understood the necessity to not overreact to tiny matters. She, much like Ronan, seemed to know how grounding a jibe could be when you were hovering on the brink between what was known and what was an abyss.

Ronan rapped his knuckles on the counter a few times. "I'm good, man," he said. "And I'm always drinking like a moron." He quirked his eyebrow sardonically at Blue, who scrunched her nose at him.

Just like that things were normal again.

Normal, except for that brief vision that had flashed in front of Ronan's eyes.

Normal, except Ronan had no idea what the vision had been. Burned into Ronan's vision was that scene. The steering wheel. The sunglasses in his hand. And… the bottle of pills on the dashboard.

How had he just now remembered the bottle of pills on the dash?

Ronan blasted to his feet, causing all the others at the table to jump and stare at him. Noah flickered slightly, ever so briefly, in surprise, and then solidified again.

"What-" Gansey began, a look of almost polite indignation on his face, but Ronan cut across him.

"I'm getting out of here," he snarled, shoving back his chair with a screech and stalking towards the exit of Nino's. As he retreated he heard Gansey say,

"Leave him. He needs time to process."

That made Ronan's blood boil even more, for some reason, and when he shoved out the door of Nino's he did so with a vengeance, pushing the door so hard that the bell hanging from it clattered against the glass.

Ronan threw himself into his car and slammed the door shut, and then just sat there, clutching the steering wheel.

That had been Kavinsky. He was sure of it. The vision had felt like a memory - a distant one, sure, but a memory nonetheless - but it wasn't his. Of that he was sure. The elation, the shock… he would have remembered that.

That was Kavinsky's memory. But why?

Ronan knew that something had connected them. They'd both been dreamers. But now Kavinsky was gone, and now he was seeing-

No. Dreamers or not, this wasn't possible. It wasn't a thing that could happen.

What the hell is happening to me? Ronan let the thought cross his mind briefly, before he wrenched his car into reverse and squealed out of the parking lot.

He needed to drive. To think.

He drove mindlessly, feeling the tires on the road, feeling every bump and flaw in the road, and hearing the comforting hum of the BMW.

Without thinking or paying attention to where he was going, Ronan found himself back among all the dreamt Mitsubishis. The place he'd last seen Kavinsky before the Fourth of July parade, when everything went to shit. Matthew. The fire demon. The night horror. And Kavinsky, when he-

Ronan got out of the car and kicked a Mitsubishi. He didn't want to be back here. He didn't know why his subconscious had brought him here, the place he least wanted to be right now. He turned around to get back into the BMW, but it was gone, fading into mist. In fact, all the cars, lines and lines of them, were slowly fading too. The trees, the sky, even the ground… all of it disappeared, both slowly and all at once.

Ronan was surrounded on all sides. It felt like a dream, but Ronan knew it wasn't. He knew dreams, and this sure as hell wasn't one.

Then a voice. It came out of the mist, harsh, with a vague Bulgarian accent. It slurred slightly, sounding somewhat drunk.

"Get the hell out of my way!" Out of the mist, a bottle soared past Ronan's head. He jerked out of the way and watched, feeling oddly separate from his own body, as it shattered on the ground. Some part of him knew that this voice wasn't talking to him, and he searched through the mist to see the target.

When he found it, he immediately knew who it was, and wished he didn't.

It was a face that had been haunting his dreams lately, but just much younger than he'd been the entire time Ronan knew him. For a moment Ronan remembered that same hollow face, those same hollow eyes, staring up at the sky, watching a fire demon and a night horror play. This time, though, his eyes were fixed on something past Ronan. The place where the bottle had come from.

Ronan turned, slowly, and suddenly he was behind Kavinsky's eyes, seeing what the other boy saw. He saw a towering figure, another bottle in one hand, bleary eyed, advancing. Ronan felt, more than saw, the danger, and felt his legs - Kavinsky's legs - stand up, wobble, and begin to move.

He fled.

Even as Ronan jerked out of the vision, his legs still moved from the muscle memory of the vision and he collided into a white Mitsubishi, its knife graphic splashed over the side seeming to mock his weakness. He slid down until he was sitting on the ground, back against the car, and leaned his head against it.

That memory... Ronan guessed that meant Kavinsky hadn't been lying when he'd said that his father had tried to kill him. That might not have been the specific time, but from the danger that Ronan still remembered seeing in that man's face, the terror in Kavinsky's legs… Ronan had no doubt.

Ronan wondered, then, why-

No.

Ronan wanted to be done with Kavinsky. He didn't want to be revisiting this. He didn't want to have to see Kavinsky as anything other than the monster that had kidnapped Matthew and nearly destroyed Cabeswater.

But now…

Ronan realized his phone was ringing. He was disturbed enough that for once he picked it up and looked at the screen to see who was calling him. It was Gansey. Ronan tossed the phone down next to him in exasperation. He didn't want to talk to Gansey right now. The phone rang itself out, and then, seconds later, started up again. Ronan flicked the phone over with one finger so that its face was pointing up. Gansey again. Ronan scoffed and continued to ignore the harsh ringing sound, much as it burrowed into his brain. The sound was a stark difference from the misty vision he'd just walked through, and it wasn't a difference he appreciated.

Once again, the phone stopped ringing. Ronan let out a brief sigh and leaned his head against the car, appreciating the coldness against his skull. It grounded him and cleared his mind, after that vision. At this point, Ronan didn't even want to understand what was happening to him. He just wanted it to stop. He was sick and tired of feeling like a monster, like he was this… this thing that even he didn't understand. When he was street racing, or drinking, or searching for Glendower with Gansey and the others, Ronan knew his place. Now, when he was dreaming, he was beginning to, because he no longer needed to be a thief. Cabeswater understood him, he was the Greywaren, and so finally he had a place in his dreams. And- and now this. It seemed Ronan would never fully find his place.

The phone was ringing again. With a brief curse, Ronan snatched up the phone.

"What, Gansey?"

"Ronan?"

Ronan cursed again, because the voice on the other end of the phone wasn't Gansey. It was Declan. Ronan considered hanging up immediately, and almost did, but Declan said something that stalled him.

"So you're alive, then."

"Why the hell would you think I was dead?" Ronan snapped into the phone. His thumb hovered over the hang up button.

"I'm sure I don't know," Declan said coolly. "But Richard Gansey called me to see if I knew where you were, so clearly he thinks you're in some sort of trouble."

Ronan shoved down the urge to curse again. Instead, he pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the time for the first time.

1:00.

In the morning.

He'd left Nino's at maybe ten in the morning - almost an entire day ago. Ronan had no idea how time had passed that quick, but he did know one thing.

Gansey must be losing his mind.

"Ronan? Where are you?" persisted Declan.

"If you try to get involved in my business like this again Declan I swear to God-" Ronan couldn't think of a proper threat that fully summed up how he was feeling at the moment, so he just picked out some choice swear words and then hung up on Declan. Then, he grudgingly dialed Gansey's number.

"Ronan?" Gansey answered immediately. Ronan twisted his face at hearing the concern in Gansey's voice. "Thank God," Gansey said. "Where are you?"

"Chill, man. I just lost track of time."

"Lost track of time? Ronan, it's-" Gansey paused, and Ronan knew that Gansey was taking a minute to compose himself. Gansey hated sounding or appearing out of control, but Ronan knew better. "Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm heading back, okay? No need to freak out."

Gansey let out a long suffering sigh. "Ronan-"

Ronan hung up and, standing up, chucked his phone into the passenger window of his BMW. He slid into the driver's seat and immediately felt more grounded. The dark leather, the smell, the smoothness of the steering wheel under his hands… this was where Ronan was at home, and this was something that Gansey would never understand.

_Kavinsky understood._

Ronan shook his head. Kavinsky was a demon. He'd kidnapped Matthew. That was enough for Ronan.

Ronan squealed out of the clearing, scraping against the side of one of the white Mitsubishi's marring the splattered knife graphic along the side, but he didn't look back.

When Ronan pulled into Monmouth Manufacturing, the first thing that struck him was the absence of Gansey's Camaro. No Camaro meant no Gansey. The lights were all out, and no sign of life came from within. Ronan, for the second time that day, pulled his phone out grudgingly and checked his texts. Sure enough, there was one from Gansey.

Come to 300 Fox Way

300 Fox Way was bustling with life, despite the fact that it was one in the morning. When Ronan pushed open the front door, he was immediately greeted with a shout.

"Hey, you're not dead somewhere!" It was Blue, and judging by the look she was giving him, she was half messing with him; there was relief behind the sparkle in her eyes. Ronan raised an eyebrow at her, but when Gansey appeared behind Blue in the hallway and gave Ronan the Richard Gansey the Third look, Ronan dropped his smirk.

"Look, man-"

"You cannot just disappear like that," Gansey said. "Especially after that episode at Nino's."

"Episode?" Ronan was aware of Blue's eyes on him, and his eyes sweeping to the side picked up more than just Blue. Noah was there, and Adam, but they weren't the only ones. Blue's mom was there, arms folded, and so was the quiet one - Persephone. Calla was there too, staring directly at Ronan. He glared at her but she didn't look away. Her stare challenged him. I know what you are.

"Yes, episode," Gansey was saying when Ronan flicked his eyes back to him. "When you passed out like…"

Gansey's voice started fading as fog began to crowd Ronan's vision.

Not again, Ronan had time to think, before the fog completely consumed him.

He saw himself, but through another person's eyes. Kavinsky's, he knew. He saw himself racing Kavinsky, smiling like he was about to punch something or someone. He felt the excitement, the adrenaline, the pure dirty joy of racing just like he always felt it, but those emotions weren't his, they were Kavinsky's. This was Kavinsky's memory, not his, although everything felt so, so familiar. No wonder they'd clashed so much. They were nearly one and the same.

The memories sped up. Ronan saw Kavinsky's father, dead on the ground. He saw Prokopenko, dreamt. He saw the lines of cars. He saw himself, racing Kavinsky. The drugs that Kavinsky dreamt. The ragers he threw. The darkness, festering.

The darkness struck a chord in Ronan. In his mind's eye he saw his own memories. His own father, dead. Bludgeoned to death. His mother, silent, distant. Declan's disapproval. The night horrors.

But then the memories changed. The tone of them shifted. There was Gansey, explaining Glendower. Ronan and Adam, dragging each other behind his BMW. Noah laughing at his jokes. Blue's teasing. Their quest, and the lightness that came with it.

Ronan understood, then. Ronan would be Kavinsky, had he never been saved.

"Ronan!"

Ronan's eyes flew open. He wasn't frozen in sleep paralysis like normal after dreaming, which was a strange sensation for him, as his vision had felt very much like a dream, although he knew it wasn't. Multiple sets of eyes stared down at him, and Ronan realized that he was sprawled on the ground in the cramped entryway of 300 Fox Way. He scrambled to his feet and dared the others with his eyes to challenge what had just happened. Before anyone could say anything, though, Calla grabbed Ronan's arm and dragged him towards the reading room.

"We need to talk, snake," she said, slamming the door behind them. Ronan, still foggy from his vision, didn't think to protest until she'd pushed him into a chair across from her. He shot back to his feet, wary, but she just crossed her arms and looked at him.

"What?" he snapped.

"What did you see?" Calla asked him.

"Who said I saw anything?"

Calla said nothing, and Ronan remembered what she was, and what her talents were. Where her hand had gripped his arm itched slightly.

"None of your damn-"

"You saw the other dreamer," Calla interrupted. "Why?"

"Hell if I know," Ronan spat. "Aren't you supposed to be the experts with all this voodoo stuff?"

Calla looked at him as if she knew that it was all bravado, all venom, and hiding behind it was plain, unadulterated...

"Well?" Ronan prompted.

"The two of you are connected," Calla said, after a pause. "That much I know."

Fear.

"How do I make it stop?"

Calla smiled, a slow, somewhat venomous smile. Ronan found it comforting. This was a woman who wouldn't lie to him, or sugarcoat the truth. She wouldn't even temper it slightly.

"You can't. You have to let them run their course."

Dread burned briefly, but Ronan extinguished it. He reminded himself that he'd already conquered his night horrors. He didn't need them to resurface, and no way in hell did he need to let himself collect any more.

"How do I know when they have?"

Calla's hand snapped out and closed around Ronan's wrist. Ronan tensed, but stifled his urge to throw her off. He watched her eyes, watched her pupils dilate slightly. She closed them, and then opened them just as quickly.

When she spoke, it was quieter than he'd ever heard it.

"Did you learn what you were supposed to?"

Ronan considered that. He remembered all the visions. Kavinsky's darkness. His own darkness, held at bay.

He probed his feelings - something he didn't like to do often - to test his feelings about Kavinsky. They weren't quite so… venomous as before. His stomach didn't clench quite as much. He understood now. He knew his privilege.

Ronan blinked at Calla. "Yeah."

Calla grinned. That smile. Dark, fierce, happy. Ronan knew that smile.

He wore it every day.


End file.
